how are we going to get afghanistan to look like denmark? and it doesn't work very well. and part of the reason that i began to realize was that we don't understand how denmark got to be denmark. i had a visiting professorship, so i've been going. most danes have no idea how denmark got to be denmark. it struck me as a political scientist, this ought to be a book you can go to to say where did political institutions come from. i didn't see one. so i decided to write it. that's why we get the book that i've produced. so i also did not want to write a book on the origins of politics that told this traditional eurocentric or anglocentric story. not because i'm opposed to england or the west. it's a distortion. it's been one that's taught in a lot of the discourse that really beginning with carl marx that sees england as the model for modernization. england's present is everybody's future. this is what carl marx said. what you realize when you something about the history of england, it is a very peculiar country in a number of ways that i will explain. to expect other countri